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Corporate Responsibility

National and international companies must respect legal standards in the countries where they carry out their activities.

The extraction of natural resources has increased considerably in Latin America in recent years, as has the social conflicts associated with these activities. States have the power to promote and facilitate national and international private investment in the area of natural resource extraction, corporations –both national and transnational– have the right to pursue such investments within the framework of respect for domestic and international law. But this right goes hand in hand with obligations, and this is where the applicable international law framework remains weak.

Although States are the principal actors in international law, in today’s reality transnational companies play an increasingly relevant role. Given that international law regulatory framework, in addition to containing rights, also contains obligations, it is important to ensure compliance with these obligations by all parties. The behavior of the companies can be evaluated by various entities, in the company’s home country as well as the host country where the company is carrying out its activities, and can entail diverse kinds of responsibility.

DPLF considers this to be an important legal issues that should be addressed using the various regulatory instruments available. To this effect, DPLF has compiled an overview of scenarios in which the legal obligations and responsibilities of national and transnational corporations are playing out in the arena of natural resources exploitation, and in particular in indigenous territories.